Expanding Organic Farming

Many many thanks to those who donated and have supported this project and Pagri.

The transition from the Rice-Wheat Trap created by the so-called "Green Revolution" (industrial farming) to organic and natural farming is going to be slow. But we need to get out of that trap that leads to high cost tractors, implements, seeds, chemical fertilizer, and poisonous herbicides and pesticides - which often leads to high debt and often suicides. As a result, Punjab's soil and water resources have degraded. 

Agriculture is an ecological process of microbes, insects and organic matter restoring soil fertility so that the "living soil" cooperates happily with a happy plant, and sunlight and small amounts of water to create produce that is clean, healthy and nutritious. Its not a chemical industrial process based on chemical warfare on all living things except the crop - as is practiced in Punjab and the world over.

So, here our leader Balwinder Singh is beginning the slow but sure transition to organic farming by teaching a small group of farmers the new techniques that help them do low cost clean agriculture. These techniques can be much lower ibn cost, enabling us to cover more farmers.

Here we are working to identify and support willing farmers who will implement new lower cost organic farming type practices, so that these farmer’s fields can act as demonstration sites and motivate other farmers to change their practices from the current wheat-rice monocultures. The objective here is to create a revolution among small farmers through actual ground level action. This also needs a parallel activity to convince consumers of the higher value of organic produce, so that they are willing to pay more for it (as now happens in the US).

When this process succeeds, we will be ready to expand its area and to other farmers.